


Three Blows From a Bayonet

by talefeathers



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Barricade Day, Blood, Bromance, Canon Era, Drabble, Gen, Grief/Mourning, On The Barricade, One Shot, Sad, Violence, not sure how i should tag this tbh, um
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story that starts on the other side of the barricade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Blows From a Bayonet

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this post: http://nicecourfeyrack.tumblr.com/post/59943518963

_“Primeaux!”_

I scrambled over the barricade after him, for once not thinking about the bullets whistling past my ears, not thinking about the screams and the heat and the little shard of terror lodged deep in my stomach, not thinking about anything but my best friend tumbling over to the wrong side of the ramshackle structure. I clawed my way up over chairs and tables, felt splinters dig themselves into my palms. I shoved insurgents out of my way, sent ragtag revolutionaries who couldn’t have been older than I was toppling down the jagged wooden cliff and onto the street.

_“PRIMEAUX!”_

The other side of the barricade didn’t look much different than the one I’d come from: it was still rank with sweat and fear, and bodies still littered the ground. But even amid all the shock-stained faces that wore our uniform, it didn’t take long for me to find him.

The first thing I noticed was the blood. Crawling through the cobbles where he lay, darkening his uniform. I noticed his left hand: knuckles in the spreading puddle, fingers half-curled and limp.

_I’m too late._

One of the rioters was kneeling over his body. He was disheveled and blood-stained himself; his hands shook, his spectacles slid down his nose. The sounds of screaming and cannon fire became distant to me, drowned by the roaring of blood in my ears, by the pounding of my heart. Wrong, this was _wrong._ Primeaux wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination; he could be arrogant and he could be forgetful and he could even be cruel, but he had meant more than this he had _deserved_ more than to have his body looted by some fanatic and my fingers tightened around my musket until my knuckles turned white and I felt myself start to run toward this student this _bastard_ this self-righteous instigator and as he moved to lift Primeaux’s body I rammed my bayonet through his chest. Once, twice, three times. He turned his eyes, not to me, but to the sky, his spectacles sliding back up his nose long enough for one last glance at the cloudless blue. Then I yanked my bayonet from his heart and he fell heavily onto the cobbles. Dead.

“And stay down,” I spat.

“Gagnon.”

All at once everything snapped back into full focus. Where there had been the red haze of anger, the jagged blur of grief, there was now stark clarity as I turned to face my ashen comrade.

“Primeaux?” I took his face in my hands, watched his eyelids flutter weakly. “You’re alive!”

He coughed what was meant to be a laugh. “No. Not for much longer.” He forced his eyes to open enough so that he could meet my gaze. “Why did you kill him?”

It had happened in such a flash of fury that it took me a moment to realize who he was talking about. “That -- that _looter?”_

“You damned fool,” Primeaux sighed with brotherly exasperation, eyes slipping shut once more. “Look again.”

With rising apprehension, I turned back to the young man in the blue waistcoat whose glassy eyes were still fixed on the sky. I noticed things now that the red haze and the jagged blur hadn’t allowed me to before: I could see a person past the ragged clothes and the spectacles, I could see the little shock of gray in his light brown hair, the elegant slope of his nose, ink stains mingling with dried blood on his right hand. I could see the strip of fabric clutched in his left. A bandage. My breathing became shallow.

“He was helping you,” I heard myself say. I turned back to Primeaux, but his head had fallen to one side. I fumbled for his pulse and did not find it. 

He was gone. 

The rebel with the spectacles could have saved him, and I’d killed him. I’d killed both of them. 

I couldn’t breathe.

I turned away from what I’d done, tried to bury it in the tumult around me, tried to remember why I was here and whose voice I was supposed to be listening to but everything was heat and noise and red and nothing was solid and I couldn’t breathe and I didn’t want to I just needed a way out where was out how did I get _out?_

Eventually my eyes found something static; something young and beautiful and blazing. There was a moment when I believed it was an angel. Only when he raised his gun did I recognize the chief of the insurgents, tall and terrible. His shoulders were squared and his jaw was tight, but I noticed that, almost imperceptibly, he trembled. I noticed in his eyes the red haze of anger and the jagged blur of grief mingling with the glint of unshed tears. The man with the bandage, I realized, had been important to him. I forced myself to smile.

“I killed him,” I snarled, offering him my chest. “I skewered him like a pig.”

And finally, mercifully, the golden-haired revolutionary pulled the trigger.


End file.
